Parting
by Starchild524
Summary: At her brother's imminent death, Alanna must confront her demons and his. AT. SFF.


Author's Note: Wow, this officially makes me a sick bastard(ess): I've broken the barrier and actually transplanted a healthy, loving relationship to two people who happen to be twins. I blame my muse. 

Rating for incest and some explicit material. READ: not suitable for children. 

Thom and Alanna are sole creation and property of Tamora Pierce; I have stolen and mutilated their characters beyond recognition. Okay, beyond canon - but I just wanted to explore this… possibility. This would be set sometime near the climax of _Lioness Rampant_, during Thom's treatment. 

~~~~~

****

Parting

The night was stifling, weighing on every soul crazy enough to be awake at this hour, pushing in through windows and settling into every corner. Crickets shrilled weakly into the velvety air; the stars that poked through the blackness above seemed like sparks or pinpricks, accents to emphasize one's misery. Alanna wondered if nights like these drove any mad, or to the periphery of their senses, until one floundered on the rim of the cliff, flailing desperately and trying not to be swept into the depths below. It seemed somehow inevitable. Stamped among the stars. 

Thom sat on the edge of a silk-cushioned seat, throwing a soft glow into the air around him, his bony hands digging into the fabric and loosening embroidery. His shoulders were rigid, his face tight yet beaten, like a fallen warrior who sees his enemy's sword looming and still wishes to defy till the end. "Nineteen years old," he said softly, the voice harsh. "All my life I knew I was going to be a great sorcerer, that I was going to do great things. All my life I was waiting, and never bothered to think of myself as anything else - and it comes to this." 

"Thom, don't be morbid," she chided, though her throat was tight. She sat curled in a chair, boots on the floor, arms around her knees. Now her hands twisted into one another, tense. 

He turned pleading, bloodshot eyes to her. "I'm going to die, Alanna. There's _nothing_ anyone can do to stop it, and you should stop trying to. I can feel it coming. I know somehow it's right. I… undid the fabric of Nature, I brought a man back from the dead - and I should take his place." 

Alanna wanted to contradict him again, to pound it into him that he was _not_ leaving, but words weighed down inside her. Thom gave a bitter half-laugh, staring off into the distance. "I suppose I could be glad to go out in a blaze of glory, after accomplishing a feat not seen since the pre-Human Era mages, but… I just feel poisoned. All my ambition, everything I ever hoped for, turned into some kind of nightmare. Betrayed - because thought I could get away with undoing the gods' will, and brought this on myself. I had no idea… Alanna," he whispered, turning back to face her, shoulders slumping. "I'm scared." 

She went to him and caught him in her arms, clutching his too-thin frame as though she could hold him back from death. Tears flooded her eyes; she closed them and breathed in his smell, the crisp smell she'd always known from childhood, now mixed with sweat and candle smoke. 

You can't die… He was part of her, interwoven in the fabric of her very being. Their minds, if not identical, always ran parallel; she could trace the frame of his thoughts as he spoke. They shared everything of childhood, the same burden family legacies, and could understand things buried in the depths of memory, things no one else knew of. She couldn't let him go. She would be empty, hollowed out from that day on. 

"Thom," she whispered, if only to say his name, trying to reaffirm him. 

He pulled back and looked at her, tracing her features with his eyes. This close, she was painfully aware of his dry, loose skin, the circles under his eyes. Her heart cried out to do something, anything to restore him. She wanted only to keep him safe. 

"You, Alanna…" he rasped, and a smile brightened his ravaged face. "You'll do fine. You've got friends, you're a hero to the country, you mean a lot to people. _You _were never the kind of person to fool yourself." A sadness passed over his face again. "But I… I never realized until now how all along I was barely hanging on to life. I ignored the rest of the world, shut myself in my study to play with magic. No one ever cared for me any more than I bothered with them." 

"Thom, that's not true," she protested. 

This time his smile was bitter. "It is, and you know it. I'm different from you, Alanna. I only thought of myself, and went off on my own path. And now I'm alone. I'm never going to be married or have children… do you realize what that's like?" He clutched her wrist. "You're my only living relative on earth." 

She put her arms around him again, pressed a kiss against his burning cheek and laid her head on his shoulder. The threat of losing her brother reduced the whole world down to the two of them, and Alanna's ferocious determination not to let him go. She held him tightly, trying to bury herself in him so he would be reassured and fulfilled and sheltered. She realized then that she would do anything, anything within her power, to help him. 

__

You're not alone. I'm here for you. I swear I will be.

Everything was perfect if only they could be together, facing the world hand in hand as two parts of a whole should be. They needed nothing but each other. 

She felt his arms loosen slightly, then start tracing up and down her back. One trembling hand lifted the hair away from her shoulder and started stroking her neck with reverent fingers, exploring. 

And it filled her whole mind like an explosion of light - that she wanted nothing but to be as close to him as she possibly could. 

__

I can't let you go. 

She thought of two red-headed children playing on the banks of a river outside of Trebond, laughing and holding hands. They had promised each other they would be together all their lives. She was not going to go back on that oath. 

She was not so much aware of their surroundings, but in a moment they had somehow ended up sitting on the edge of his bed, and both stopped a moment, amethyst eyes locked on one another. Time froze and Alanna was only aware of their panting into the silence, copper hair frosted with the moonlight. 

But she couldn't or wouldn't stop, any more than a waterfall could avoid sweeping over the cliff. She loved her brother and now, they both needed for her to prove it. At last they were together. She took hold of his hands and pulled him down, eased until they were both lying down facing each other. 

His bony, rough hand raised to her cheek and moved across her skin, melding into her with the touch. "I love you," he whispered. 

And as a sister, his thought echoed through her head, amplified tenfold, and stirred an answer in perfect harmony. _"Always."_

She reached forward and kissed him, as she had never before, her lips roving over his, tongue searching, groping, seeking to make two into one. He was her twin, herself in another body, the deepest parts of her that she knew she could find nowhere else. He was her ambition, her fear of failure and death, and she needed to face her fears. He was her shadowed side, the brittle shell of what she might easily have become. What he had lost, she needed to reconcile, or it would return to haunt her with her brother's ghost. 

They had been together, two as one, before birth. And now, on the edge of death, it was right that they be together again. 

He was her twin, a mirror image of her thoughts and passions, a counterpart, a complement. 

Their bodies, too, seemed made for each other. 

~~~~~

The night slid by in a stream of heat, the ebb and flow of passion; hard, rhythmic breathing punctuated by gasps, hands mapping out and memorizing each other's bodies. She felt his touch everywhere, coming and going, tracing over her breast, down her ribs, around her body, up her spine, electrifying - her muscles tensed under his caress. She, too, felt him as she never had and never would again, the whole of their existence together funneling into this one night when there was perfect trust between them. She wanted to know her brother completely, to know herself. 

She could not stop him from slipping away. Even now, locked as they were in one body and mind, she knew instinctively as he did that he would not live long. But she would - and she could only bind him to her. _This one last time…._

For this one last time, he would be hers and she would not let him go. 

Finally they lay sweaty and tangled, drunk with and lost in one another, and gazed at each other without words. After a moment she grasped his hand and kissed it gently, then lay back, breaths slowing. The two twins sank into turbulent, shapeless dreams. 

Alanna rose early the next morning and dressed mechanically in the thin predawn light seeping through the window. Already the night past was sinking back in her memory, folding down on itself and being buried. She would leave and go on. 

In the doorway she paused, and stole a last glance over her shoulder at her sleeping brother. He lay curled in the sheets, already still and pale as death. He looked tired, his tousled hair flecked with gray. 

"Good-bye, Thom," she whispered. 


End file.
